Empowering Multicultural and Virtual Teams

As part of YellowSeeds Creative Coaching and Consulting Services, one of our Seed Service is Empowering Multicultural and Virtual Teams.

Every Services @YellowSeeds has a seed that started growing long time ago. This is the story about this one…

When I faced the challenge of taking a Project Manager Role with a team dispersed in India, Argentina and US back in time 12 yrs ago, I had the following questions in front of me:

• How can I lead a team that I never met?

• How can I trust they will show up for their assigned task at the agreed time when they are in different times zones?

• How can I motivate them if they don’t report to me in the organizational chart?

• How can I connect with them profoundly if they are from different cultures? Even when our language is not our native one

I had a great teacher from whom I learned a lot, Bruno. When I see it in retrospective, there was something not written in a document, but I will call it Social contract. Closer to our time, Agile Methodology put it a name on it, they also called it Team Social Contracts.

But what is a Team Social Contract?

It is the way the team will interact, the dynamic they will follow, the agreement of the team operation.

We also had them when we were at the office, like stoping by a colleague’s office and asked them what they did over the weekend, or going for a coffee, seating at the same table with your computer with others work mates and work on an issue, or even when we showed up on time for a meeting in a room.

In all of these interactions there was a mix between the professional role we were playing along with a piece of us we used to bring at work (our clothes, what we like to drink while working, or a tired face because we haven’t slept well). Based on those social interactions at the office we learned a little bit about each other.

But what happened with that Social Contracts when we work from home?

We just need to create the same team dynamics than the ones we used to have at the office, BUT in a different way. And of course add new ones.

How can we create new ways of spontaneous interactions like stop by a colleague's office to talk about what happened over the weekend?

First, we gotta be conscious that we used to do that and the benefit of it. Informal interactions with our work mates is important, that’s how we used to make friends at work and solved a lot of issues out of a formal setting. So set up some time either to meet at the office some day, or call them spontaneously could be some options.

How can we go for a coffee if we are not at the office? You can go for a walk in nature while you talk over the phone or run a video call with your coffee.

How can I connect on the personal level with my colleagues if I never met them?

Ask them personal questions in your meetings or by chat. What did they take for lunch that day? What is their routine before starting to work? What is the one right after work?

But the most important aspect, it is to show up in your camera.

There has been a lot of debate about this, and both sides of the discussion has a piece of right. But if we really want to have healthy environments at working from home, there are some things we will need to follow as part of our Social Contracts. Showing up is one of them.

It is the way you show that you are present there, you are paying attention to what another human is saying and your willingness to collaborate with the purpose of the meeting. Along with this, we might need to review how we organize our meetings when working from home. Do you need shorter meetings? or less number of them?

These are just some examples. Team Social Contracts should be created by the Teams, and their members should review the terms every 6 months or year, on retrospective sessions to identify what worked and what didn’t and to give voice to new comers.

So the question to reflect on this is: How is your Team Social Contract now? Is it working from home?

We will talk more about that when I speak about the Working From Home Best Practice.

Stay Colorful!